Underground Utility Damage Creates $83.2B in Economic Impact

A severed gas line, fiber cable or water main can look like a localized construction problem. The financial consequences often spread much further.

An analysis from the Common Ground Alliance (CGA) estimates that damage to underground utilities creates $83.2 billion in annual economic costs across the U.S. Direct infrastructure repairs account for just $4.9 billion, or 5.9% of the modeled total.

The remaining costs come largely from the disruption surrounding an incident: delayed construction, lost business activity, emergency response, road closures, property damage and interrupted access to power, water, communications and other essential services.

CGA has now extended its economic-impact approach to the state level, applying the model to utility damage incidents reported in 2025 across 46 states and Washington, D.C. The resulting estimates provide another way for utilities, contractors, regulators and infrastructure owners to assess excavation risk beyond the immediate cost of fixing a damaged asset.

Utility Damage Risk Extends Far Beyond Repair Costs

For businesses managing construction and infrastructure projects, the repair invoice tells only part of the story.

CGA's national model attributes $32.6 billion in annual costs to community and environmental impacts and another $31.6 billion to business and economic disruption. Operational response represents $7.8 billion, while human impacts, including injuries and fatalities, account for an estimated $6.2 billion.

Those figures show why even a relatively routine utility strike can become an expensive operational event.

A damaged telecommunications cable, for example, may not carry a particularly large replacement cost. Lost connectivity across offices, retailers, public facilities and other customers can create a much larger economic effect. A gas-line strike can trigger emergency response, evacuations, traffic restrictions and temporary business closures in addition to repair work.

The largest share of the modeled cost also comes from incidents that may receive little public attention. CGA estimates moderate-severity damages account for $64.5 billion, more than three-quarters of the national economic impact.

Location further changes the equation. Urban incidents represent $77.9 billion of the estimated $83.2 billion total. Dense concentrations of infrastructure, workers, customers and commercial activity mean service interruptions in cities can affect considerably more people and businesses at once.

CGA's state-level analysis is designed to provide more localized visibility into that exposure. It uses incidents submitted through the organization's Damage Information Reporting Tool, known as DIRT, during 2025. States recording fewer than 25 reported incidents were excluded from the analysis.

There are important limitations to those figures. DIRT reporting is voluntary, reporting practices differ between jurisdictions and the state estimates do not include the national model's adjustment for damages that go unreported. CGA therefore treats the state-level figures as minimum estimates rather than complete measures of economic impact.

That distinction makes direct state rankings less useful than examining the underlying scale and characteristics of excavation damage within individual markets.

Florida illustrates the potential volume involved. Previous CGA-related reporting has put the state's underground utility damage incidents at nearly 26,000 annually, equivalent to roughly 71 incidents per day. For states experiencing rapid construction and infrastructure development, that frequency can make excavation risk an operational and economic issue rather than simply a maintenance concern.

Damage Prevention Is Becoming a Broader Business Case

Looking beyond repair costs changes how companies can evaluate investments in utility damage prevention.

More accurate infrastructure records, improved locating technology, stronger excavation procedures and workforce training all carry costs. But comparing those investments only with the price of repairing a damaged pipe or cable can significantly understate their potential value.

The larger calculation includes project delays, lost productivity, emergency response requirements, service interruptions and the knock-on effects experienced by nearby businesses and communities.

CGA maintains industry-developed Best Practices covering excavators, utility operators, locating companies and 811 centers. It has also encouraged states to review excavation laws, enforcement practices and other parts of their damage-prevention systems.

Its 2025 DIRT findings indicate that excavators participating in CGA's Damage Prevention Institute reduced their rate of attributable damages by more than 11% between 2023 and 2025. While that result does not establish how much of the broader $83.2 billion economic estimate could be prevented, it offers one measure of how structured prevention efforts can affect incident rates.

There are also limits to what the economic model can establish. Estimates depend on assumptions around utility type, incident severity, location and indirect economic effects, while state calculations are influenced by the completeness of voluntary reporting.

The broader takeaway for infrastructure businesses is therefore less about one headline number and more about how risk is measured.

When an underground utility is damaged, the largest financial consequences may not sit on the repair budget at all. They can show up instead in delayed projects, interrupted operations, emergency costs and lost economic activity across organizations that had no direct involvement in the excavation.

For utilities, contractors and infrastructure owners, accounting for those indirect costs can provide a more complete basis for evaluating damage-prevention spending and excavation risk.